The Effects Of Task-induced Involvement Load And Personal Vocabulary Learning Strategies System On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

Incidental vocabulary acquisition means language learners can acquire new vocabulary incidentally while cultivating different language skills, such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It has become a hot issue in vocabulary acquisition.On the basis of the Input Hypothesis, the Output Hypothesis and the Information Processing Model, this study aims to investigate the effects of task-induced involvement load and personal vocabulary learning strategies system on incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading by high school students. The research questions are illustrated in the following part. (1) What effects do reading tasks with different involvement loads have on senior high school students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition? (2) What effects do their vocabulary learning beliefs have on incidental vocabulary acquisition? (3) How do their frequently used vocabulary learning strategies influence incidental vocabulary acquisition?The participants of the present study were 84 Senior One students from two parallel classes in a high school in Nanjing. They were divided into three groups to finish the following three tasks:reading comprehension in the form of multiple choice questions (the involvement load is 1), translating sentences with target words from English to Chinese (the involvement load is 2), and making sentences with target words (the involvement load is 3). This study employed the immediate vocabulary test, the delayed vocabulary test and the questionnaire to investigate the participants. The research data was analyzed by SPSS 19.0; Major research findings are presented as follows:(1) In terms of the involvement load, in the immediate test, sentence translation task leads to the best performance, followed by sentence making task. Reading comprehension task has the worst effect. In addition, sentence translation task results in a significant better performance than reading comprehension task. In the delayed test, the best performance is triggered by sentence making task, followed by sentence translation task..Reading comprehension task still gains the worst performance. Besides, sentence making task triggers a significant better performance than the other two tasks. (2) With respect to the vocabulary beliefs, in the immediate test, the participants who simultaneously hold the belief that words should be memorized and the belief that words should be acquired in context have achieved the best results, and those who only hold the belief that words should be memorized have the worst results. In the delayed test, participants who simultaneously hold the belief that words should be acquired in context and the belief that words should be studied and put to use have achieved the best results, and those who only hold the belief that words should be memorized still get the worst results. (3) With regard to vocabulary learning strategies, those who prefer the simultaneous use of rehearsal strategies and encoding strategies gain the best results in the immediate test and those who prefer the use of encoding strategies achieve the best scores in the delayed test. Thus, a summary can be made as follows: Firstly, output tasks with a higher involvement load are more conducive to incidental vocabulary acquisition than comprehensive tasks with a lower involvement load in both immediate and delayed test. Secondly, compared with memorizing belief alone, acquiring and using belief are more beneficial to incidental vocabulary acquisition. Thirdly, encoding strategies are more conducive to vocabulary acquisition as well as vocabulary retention than rehearsal strategies.This study provides some pedagogical implications for vocabulary teaching. To begin with, teachers can design output tasks such as translation and sentence making tasks with target words to enhance students’ vocabulary learning. Secondly, teachers should make students be aware of the fact that vocabulary acquisition cannot be overwhelmingly dependent on memorization, but on the language context and usage. Last but not the least, teachers also need to teach students the simultaneous use of rehearsal and encoding strategies to acquire vocabulary and pay more attention to the cultivation of students’ encoding strategies.